There were a number of reasons, but they all came down to BN’s “conditional endorsement” of the Rhode Island bill.

I cannot be a part of any organization willing to in any way shape or form to support legislation that erects new barriers for Bastards deemed  ”young.”

Rhode Island’s bill set the age of Original Birth Certificate access at 25- far above its age of consent (18.)

“Young” peoples’ human rights are not expendable.

To my reading, BN violated both its mission statement and existing policies to endorse the bill.

I personally objected to Marley, BN’s Executive Chair, throughout the process by which BN ultimately supported the bill. I did what I could to prevent BN’s support and failed.

It is now ALL our obligations to ‘go back for’ the human rights of Bastards in Rhode Island who were left behind by this legislation.

But I will be doing so separately from any of the organizations who supported this legislative abomination.

I am left feeling I did not leave Bastard Nation, so much as Bastard Nation left me, but more to the point, I feel BN left those under 25  in Rhode Island when they needed an “adoptee rights organization” most.

Letters should be short, around 200 words. Hard copies are preferable.

Mourning Dress and Hat – 1870s

(Owned by Obscura Antiques & Oddities of New York City)

via 19th Century Post

I shouldn’t have to blog this, I’ve written it all before, over and over again. Today’s events are everything I’ve continually warned of year in and year out.

NJ-CARE’s short sighted, self absorbed damaging and contorted (lack of) access bill, A1406/1399/S799 passed in the General Assembly this afternoon, thus moving one step closer to sealing records for all NJ kids passing through the so called “safe haven” program once and for all.

The bill now passes on to the Governor’s Desk, where if there is any justice left in this world for Bastards and Abandoned Children it should be promptly vetoed.

Needless to say, I’m not holding my breath.

Baby dump proponents were not strong enough to pass a mandatory sealed records clause as the “Safe haven” legislation passed in New Jersey years ago, but as we saw today, they’ve found themselves a set of dupes,  and/or willing accomplices in NJ-CARE,  Adam Pertman and the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Jean Strauss and others, each of whom at this point have been more than willing to do their wretched dirty work for them.

I’ve written for years now about the unfolding catastrophe in New Jersey.

Today is but the latest chapter in the ongoing co-optation from without and gutting from what is often mistaken for “within” the movement(s) for the full restoration of adopted people’s full human rights.

I say mistaken for “within” the movement as people like Jean Strauss have plainly admitted that for her, this is not grounded in any notion of rights based work or a restoration of rights, nor to her, is it work pertaining to working to eradicate a deep injustice perpetrated on adopted people and our families (quoting from my partner Mike’s blog):

…Strauss, in the course of organizing that doomed effort, has explicitly denied that open birth certificates are a civil right of adoptees. Regarding the advocacy of her organization in California, she wrote “… this is not an effort to ‘right a wrong’ or ‘a fight for our Constitutional rights.’

Clearly, by her own admission, people like Strauss are not part of the rights based movement.

Organizations such as NJ-CARE who not only bring her in relying upon her (non-rights based) “expertise” (advocating a ’sell some out’ approach) and going so far as to adopt the same model as Strauss’ failed California “CARE” effort, likewise certainly leave themselves open to the question of whether or not they are genuinely part of the human rights based adoptee rights movement either.

NJ-CARE and individuals closely associated with it, have long signaled their willingness to trade away the human rights of adopted people standing next to them, and the access to original birth certificates for the entire class of (mostly yet even unconceived) legally abandoned children (some of whom will in turn, be reprocessed into adoptees.) Their support for and work on behalf of the fatally flawed and corrupted A1406/1399/S799 bore that out. Saying in effect, ‘we want (the possibility of maybe) getting ours, we don’t care who we trade away or trample over in the course of attempting to get that.’

It’s both shameful, and pathetic.

But more to the point, such negates any possibility of being rooted in human or civil rights, as human and civil rights are based in class based solutions. (Not “class” in terms of economic, but “class” in terms of a delineated set of people.)

One cannot “gain” human rights at the direct expense of the person also in your class standing next to you.

Or as I’ve said before ‘adoptee rights cannot be “won” at the direct expense of abandoned children (many of whom will go on to become adoptees themselves.)’

I’ve stated so often rights based solutions must apply to all, otherwise the injustice is merely sustained as the systems of power and control have not yet been dismantled.

The New Jersey bill not only fundamentally maintains the systems of discrimination, it builds new hoops for adoptees and their families to jump through, new bureaucracies, and hands the industry gifts on a silver platter, all at the expense of the human rights of other New Jersey children and eventual adults.

This is no victory, this is unconscionable.

NJ-CARE and its allies lost the ability to speak on behalf of Class Bastard and Class Bastard’s interests the moment it cleaved off other portions of Class Bastard and determined them expendable.

As to who is left speaking on behalf of those fucked over and left behind, the answer is simple enough, those firmly rooted in the human rights based demand for equality for all.

We speak on behalf of those no one else cares about, in part because some of what may come to be their circumstances were once ours.

Let me be perfectly blunt:

You can’t claim to genuinely be for adoptee rights if your strategy involves leaving subsets of adoptees behind.

That’s why I have written so often and so clearly over and over again about how the genuine adoptee rights work is rooted in leaving no one behind. (As but one of many examples, see my post, Bastard Access- either we all go together or we don’t go at all- “Nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.”)

Let’s be clear,  those  willing to sell out Class Bastard in their personal rush to (possibly) gain access to their own, (provided of course, they don’t find themselves on the receiving end of a contact veto, now repackaged as a “contact preference”- precisely the form of  “contact preference form” creep that again, I’ve warned about for years now) are not part of the genuine adoptee rights movement.

Their willingness to over and over again, attempt to ‘justify’ their hope that (some) records might be restored to their rightful owners by turning to tactics such as the insistence that ‘need for medical history’ as the basis of their call for legislative ….something, (rather than standing firm on the simple demand that equality alone is enough, that all of us must regain that right we once held) has in fact worsened the preexisting quagmire NJ’s adoptees ALREADY find themselves trapped within.

NJ-CARE and its allies through their support of this bill have worked to construct a new system that will compel mothers to turn their otherwise  legally protected personal medical histories over to the state.

As a longtime abortion and women’s reproductive health advocate myself, who understands that many of the modern origins of consent and consent forms as well as personal privacy and freedom from unwarrented governmental intrusion (rooted in Eisenstadt v. Baird, not Roe and Doe) I’m appalled at NJ-CARE’s support for yet FURTHER government intrusion into women’s genuine medical privacy rights.

But obviously, I have many areas of grave concern with the bill.

The substitute bill version that was approved today contains precisely some of the windfalls to industry at the expense of our rights that I warned about, such as a new liability shield, ensuring we will not be able to seek redress in court, even in cases wherein “inaccuracies” are proffered as reality, (such as in the NJ Catholic Charities fraud I blogged here):

7.    (New section)  a. A person, firm, partnership, corporation, association or agency that has placed a child for adoption shall not be liable in any civil or criminal action for damages resulting from information provided by the State Registrar pursuant to this act.

b.    An employee, agent or officer of the Department of Health and Senior Services who is authorized by the Commissioner of Health and Senior Services to disclose information relating to the certification of birth pursuant to this act, shall not be liable for:

(1) disclosing information based on a written, notarized request submitted in accordance with this act; and

(2) any error or inaccuracy in the information that is disclosed after receipt of a written, notarized request submitted in accordance with this act, and any consequence of that error or inaccuracy.

It’s a gift to the adoption industry. It strips us and our family members of our right to sue.

This bill is not about increasing our rights, it’s about decreasing our rights.

It is not about opening records, so much as it is about sealing records, both through vetoes and for the dumped kids.

I could go on and on, pulling sections of the bill and pointing out over and over again the damage they stand to do to our rights, to our Mothers’ rights, to the rights of children passing through the baby dump program. (Fortunately Bastard Nation has already catalogued many of the bill’s horrors.)

But as I said in New York at the Evan B. Donaldson cheerleading pep rally for the bill (at which Mr. Pertman, the EBD head openly lied about the institute’s support for the bill)

“Have you read the bill?”

It’s all there in black and white.

Those proponents I’ve spoken to about the bill are past the point of listening.

It’s become tribal, an article of “faith” that this bill is a good thing, and any of us who dare stand against it we are being re-categorized as the ENEMY of adoptee rights.

Not surprising, considering it’s precisely what Strauss and her CARE group did in California.

(Never mind the fact that groups with CARE in their name in the adoption realm have yet to ever pass any of their deformer bills and are synonymous with sellling adoptees out and making messes wherever they go, while those they’re busily attacking, like Bastard Nation DO have a track record, and an extensive one at that, of actually getting clean bills passed that genuinely restore access to all.)

I know speaking only for myself personally, I stand on the side of all adopted people receiving equitable treatment under law and deserve to have our records restored to us for no other reason than this is a matter of our basic human rights.

No child should be intentionally stripped of their identity by the state. Certainly not merely for passing through New Jersey’s legalized child abandonment child laundering system, and all the more so those who were never at any risk, who were born in hospitals to identified Mothers only to have that information stripped from them after the fact.

No adoptee should be left behind by a “contact preference” creeped contact veto. No Mother should be forced by the state to hand over her personal and legally protected private medical history year in and year out so that yet another state bureaucracy can be constructed rather than simply restoring class Bastard’s basic equality.

Yet this is the very damage ACS 1406 stands poised to unleash.

Our genuine “birthright” is that of equal treatment under law.

This legislation fails that most basic test.

For those who care about the real rights of Bastards and those legally abandoned in New Jersey, all I can say is the clock’s ticking. If this damnedable bill gets signed into law, it’s those with the least voice, the least political power, and precious few advocates indeed who will be forced to pay the price.

Not that NJ-CARE cares.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Missouri HB 351: Bastard Nation Submitted Testimony – OPPOSE

Tuesday, the Missouri Senate Health, Mental Health, Seniors, and Families Committee held a hearing on it’s greatly flawed SB 351. (text, status/history) Bastard Nation, through our long-time member Carla McBrine as able to submit our opposition testimony in person. Unfortunately, the committee voted the bill out of committee (I haven’t been able to find the roll call vote) and the bill is headed for the Senate. At this time, we don’t know if it will be scheduled for a vote. The session ends May 13.

TESTIMONY

SB 351:

access to identifying information for adoptions original birth certificate

Missouri Senate Health, Mental Health, Seniors and Families Committee

March 29, 2011

OPPOSE

Privilege is the opposite of rights

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support full, unrestricted access for all adopted persons, SB 351.

Under current Missouri law, the original birth certificates of all Missouri adoptees are sealed and cannot be released to the adoptee except by court order and only with the consent of both the biological and adoptive parents. This 4-signature consent represents the most restrictive OBC access law in the United States. For as long as we can remember, Missouri adoption reform advocates have been attempting to free the state’s adoptees from these onerous restrictions.

Unfortunately, SB 351 is not the bill to overturn the current law. SB 351makes superficial changes to the OBC access structure, removing adoptive parent sign-offs, while maintaining retrospectively and prospectively the other restrictions which keep Missouri adoptee birth records and identity a state secret.

SB 351 is misleading and inimical to the rights of all Missouri adoptees. The measure is promoted as an “adoptee rights” and OBC “access bill.” It is not. SB 351 reinforces out-dated adoption secrecy through the disclosure affidavit for “birthparents” The bill even authorizes a natural parent to not only order the state to withhold the OBC from the adoptee, but to override the wishes of the other parent that it be released! SB 351 does not restore the right to the OBC once enjoyed by all Missouri adoptees. Instead, it makes adoptee access to their own birth certificates a state/”birth family” conditioned privilege separate and unequal from the right enjoyed by Missouri’s not adopted.

Sooner or later Missouri and every other state that has not opened OBCs unconditionally to adoptees are going to be forced to. The issue isn’t going away. This is not a matter of if, but when.

Adopted adults, especially since 9/11, are increasingly denied passports, drivers licenses, pensions, Social Security benefits, professional certifications, and security clearances due to discrepancies on their amended birth certificates, and their inability to produce an original birth certificate to answer the problems.

Adoptees without a genuine original birth record could soon be barred from running for public office.‭ ‬At least‭ ‬10‭ ‬states, including Missouri (HB 283; sp Lyle Rowland, Mike Kelly) have introduced legislation requiring presidential and vice-presidential candidates to present their original birth certificates to appropriate authorities to prove citizenship eligibility for office.‭ ‬Some of these bills go farther,‭ ‬mandating anyone running for office to prove citizenship through an original birth certificate.‭ ‬It is no stretch to think that someday soon adoptees could be barred from voting due to lack of‭ “‬legal‭” ‬identity over problematic amended birth certificates,‭ ‬and the perpetual sealing of the originals.‭

Kansas and Alaska have never sealed original birth certificates. Since 1999 four states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to records and identity access: Oregon through ballot initiative, and Alabama, New Hampshire, and Maine through legislation. No statistics are available for Kansas and Alaska, but approximately 17,000 OBCs in the latter four states have been released with no reported ill consequences.

Rights are for all citizens, not favors doled out to some Missouri does not segregate rights by religion, ethnicity, age, or gender. It should not segregate rights by birth, adoptive status, or third party preference.
Vote DO NOT PASS on SB 351. All of Missouri adoptees must enjoy equal protection, due process, and dignity. Missouri adoptees deserve better than SB 351!

Submitted by Marley Greiner
Executive Chair
Bastard Nation: the adoptee rights organization
March 27, 2011

Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adoptee’s historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult adoptee, without condition, and without qualification.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Texas: Bastard Nation Testimony in Opposition to SB 287

Tomorrow the Texas Senate Jurisprudence Committee will hold a hearing on SB 287, the newest attempt by legislators to torture that state’s Class Bastard. There are more things wrong with this bill than the special effects in Spiderman. Below is the 3-minute testimony Bastard Nation submitted to the committee.

Texas Senate Jurisprudence Committee, March 22, 2011

SUBMITTED TESTIMONY
SB 287 access to identifying information for adoptions original birth certificate access

OPPOSE

Privilege is the opposite of right

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support full, unrestricted access for all adopted persons, upon request, of their own true, unaltered original birth certificates (OBC). We oppose SB 287.

SB 287 is egregious in extremis. SB 287 is prospective. It contains a misnamed, linguistically confusing “contact preference form” (which has nothing to do with “preference” or “contact”)that authorizes a natural parent to not only order the state registrar to withhold the OBC from the adoptee, but to override the “preference” of the other parent that it be released. Moreover, treating adult adoptees and their natural parent(s) as children at best, dangerous criminals at worst, SB 287 forces mandatory social service or mental health counseling on both parties simply because they want the OBC released.

SB 287 is a dirty bill.

• * Clean bills, unlike SB 287 with its conditions and restrictions, provides equal OBC access to all adoptees retrospectively and prospectively, with no conditions or exceptions.
• * Clean bills, unlike SB 287, contain no third party disclosure and contact vetoes.
• * Clean bills, unlike SB 287, contain no mandatory counseling, registries, confidential state intermediaries, and other conditions that limit the free flow of information and treat the adopted differently from the not-adopted.
• * Clean bills, unlike SB 287, have nothing to do with search and reunion, matters best left to individuals to act on without state mediation and control.
• * Clean bills unlike, unlike SB 287 with it’s “anonymous” medical registry, have nothing to do with adoptee/parent medical histories. The OBC, in fact, contains no medical information. A state demand for natural parent medical history, as included in SB 287, may be in violation of federal HIPAA provisions.

Clean bills, unlike SB 287 simply let the adopted person receive their own birth certificate with no government intervention, like the not-adopted. A clean bill in Texas, unlike SB 287 would restore the right of OBC access that all Texas adoptees enjoyed until the mid-1970s.

When adoptees are denied the right to their own birth certificates our other rights can be endangered. Since‭ ‬9/11,‭ ‬especially,‭ ‬we are increasingly denied passports,‭ ‬drivers‭’ ‬licenses,‭ ‬pensions,‭ ‬Social Security benefits,‭ ‬professional certification and licenses,‭ ‬and security clearances due to discrepancies on our falsified government-created amended birth certificates,‭ ‬and inability to present true documents sealed by the state to remedy the problems.

Adoptees without a genuine original birth record could soon be barred from running for public office.‭ ‬At least‭ ‬10‭ ‬states, including Texas (HB 295) have introduced legislation requiring presidential and vice-presidential candidates to present their original birth certificates to appropriate authorities to prove citizenship eligibility for office.‭ ‬Some of these bills go farther,‭ ‬mandating anyone running for office to prove citizenship through an original birth certificate.‭ ‬It is no stretch to think that someday soon adoptees could be barred from voting due to lack of‭ “‬legal‭” ‬identity over problematic amended birth certificates,‭ ‬and the perpetual sealing of the originals.‭

‭If passed, ‬SB 287 with its restrictions and exclusionary rules, will guarantee that Texas adoptees will never be treated on an equal plane with the not-adopted. If passed, the damage done by SB 287 will take decades–if ever– to untangle.

‭The Texas legislature should take action now to assure that its adopted population is not subjected to public and private scrutiny and discrimination due to birth certificate irregularities and seals; that all Texas adoptees receive equal treatment, protection, and due process ‬Vote DO NOT PASS on SB 287. Kill this bill. Then come back with a clean bill that guarantees that all Texas adoptees will enjoy equal protection, due process, and dignity.

Submitted by Marley Greiner
Executive Chair
Bastard Nation: the adoptee rights organization

March 21, 2011

Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adoptee’s historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult adoptee, without condition, and without qualification.

Connecticut: Bastard Nation’s Letter in Opposition to HB 890

Connecticut currently has two OBC access bills in the hopper. The first, HB 65 is a placeholder which has yet to be written. The second is HB 890 which would open OBCs prospectively for adoptees 21 years old and older adopted after January 2, 2012 contains a disclosure veto. HB 890 is scheduled for a hearing tomorrow before the legislature’s Select Committee on Children. We sent this letter opposing the bill to committee members this afternoon:

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support full, unrestricted access for all adopted persons, upon request, of their own true, unaltered original birth certificates (OBC). We oppose HB 890, a bill that would prospectively the OBC to adoptees, with disclosure veto restrictions, to persons 21 years of age or older, whose adoptions were finalized on or after October 12, 2012.

This bill is scheduled to be heard tomorrow, February 8, 2011 by the Select Committee on Children.

Bastard Nation. opposes HB 890, and urges you to vote Do Not Pass.

HB 890 creates a nonsensical tiered discriminatory system of OBC access for Connecticut adoptees based on their date of birth, date of their adoption finalization,and their birthparent consent.

HB 890 ignores thousands of the state’s adopted population who will still be unable to acquire their OBC, while at the same time creates a new class of adoptees not even born yet, who can acquire their OBCs unless their birthparent(s) object.

HB 890 creates a prospective new special “right” for birthparents that enables them to bar their adult offspring from acquiring their own birth certificates, a right that no other parent has.

In sum, HB 890 reinforces out-dated adoption secrecy. It does nothing to restore the right of unrestricted OBC access that all Connecticut adoptees enjoyed until 1974. It makes adoptee access to their own birth certificates a state/birthparent conditioned privilege separate and unequal from the right enjoyed by Connecticut’s not adopted who can acquire their own birth certificates unhindered.

Please vote DO NOT PASS on HB 890, and support a bill that mandates equal OBC access, without conditions, to all Connecticut adoptees, past, present, and future.

Sincerely yours,

Marley E. Greiner
Executive Chair
Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization

I have no interest in reinventing the wheel.

So I just scanned this Bastard Nation flyer from the back of my copy of the Basic Bastard.

‘Nuff said.

]]> http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/11/11/veterans-day-got-records/feed/ 0 http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/08/16/pennsylvania-bastard-nation-action-alert-monday-is-contact-chairman-oliver-day/ http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/08/16/pennsylvania-bastard-nation-action-alert-monday-is-contact-chairman-oliver-day/#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:34:19 +0000 Baby Love Child http://www.babylovechild.org/?p=3759 Sunday, August 15, 2010

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: Monday is “Contact Chairman Oliver Day” (Pennsylvania)

Please distribute freely!

HB 1978 is a short, simply written bill to restore the right of all Pennsylvania adoptees to their original birth certificates without restriction. For months, the bill has been stalled, with no hearings, in the House Health and Human Services Committee chaired by Rep. Frank Louis Oliver.

To move this bill into hearings, Pennsylvania Adoptee Rights (PAR) is sponsoring “Contact Chairman Oliver Day”–a day dedicated to asking Rep. Oliver to schedule hearings.

You do not have to be from Pennsylvania to help. Please join activist around the country and contact Rep. Oliver. Messages shouldn’t take more than two sentences.

Call, fax, or email Rep. Oliver now.

Bastard Nation is not affiliated with PAR and HB 1978 is not a Bastard Nation bill. We, however, support the action and endorse the bill as it is currently written, and will continue to do so as long as it remains clean.

This is not an adoptee rights bill.

An unknown number of adoptees will be left behind by this bill, further, it would actually SEAL the records of any child entering the New Jersey child welfare system by way of the “safe haven” baby dump system.

In short, any records this bill would open will come at the direct expense of the rights of other adoptees, abandoned children, and boarder babies (see below.)

The bill has now been released to the full Assembly.

Email contact is convoluted at best. For the moment, at least, this page has a full contact list, click on each individual  Assemblyman or Assemblywoman’s links (not the Senator links) and you’ll find phone numbers and other contact information . You can also utilize the “Contact your legislator” button to come to an email contact form for each Assemblymember. I’ll do some further digging and see if I can come up with a better means of contact.

Also see Bastard Nation’s latest action alert urging letters to the Governor-  BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: Please Write New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to Veto SCS799.1399. I will post it in full at the end of this post.

I submitted testimony opposing the bill, but was unable to be present at the hearing. I listened to the full audio the afternoon and early evening of the hearing.

Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization also submitted testimony in opposition to the bill.

There are other opponents to the bill, a number of them ideologically opposed to women’s autonomy and free agency, but I am sadly unaware of any other adoptee rights organizations who have held the line and fought against this disastrous bill, holding out for a bill that would instead provide full equality to all adoptees and for the abandoned children and boarder babies of New Jersey.

To say that is a disappointing state of affairs is an understatement. Watching organizations and individuals actually supporting this bill that would actually seal records for a number of adoptees and other children has been disappointing to say the least.

It reveals a lack of comprehension of the importance of standing for the rights of those often most vulnerable, unable to speak on their own behalf, with no real political representation and those whose rights are all too often deemed ‘expendable.’

I approach this as I do all adoption related legislation, from the personal perspective of both one who was left behind and whose rights were deemed ‘expendable’ in the Ohio adoption ‘reform’ effort AND from the perspective of someone who was apparently a boarder baby, born in a hospital to an identified mother but who was taken into the foster system, not home with her. Which is to say, I know a thing or two from personal experience about precisely the damage that this bill in New Jersey stands to do.

Sadly, far from an actual open records bill, A1406 will by default, SEAL the records of kids entering the New Jersey child welfare system via the “safe haven” or baby dump program.

The bill’s attached statement spells it out in plain English (emphasis mine):

In the case of a child who was surrendered pursuant to the “New Jersey Safe Haven Infant Protection Act,” the State Registrar shall deem that the birth parent requested nondisclosure and shall not provide the birth parent’s name or home address, if recorded on the child’s birth certificate. The Division of Youth and Family Service (DYFS) in the Department of Children and Families is directed to notify the State Registrar when a child is surrendered pursuant to that law to enable the Registrar to identify the certificate of birth in order to deem that the birth parent requested nondisclosure.

For any child passing through the “safe haven” intake path, they will be treated from the outset as if they were vetoed from birth, by default. Their records will be sealed from them, barring a parent later being able to somehow prove they are the parent and also somehow remove the auto-veto, these kids will be screwed for their lifetimes.

As I’ve documented here on my blog before, New Jersey is one of the states counting boarder babies, those born in hospitals to identified mothers into it’s baby dump system. (See New Jersey- Boarder Babies being folded into “Safe Haven” statistics.)

As these abandoned children and boarder babies enter the child welfare system, some will be adopted, but others will enter the foster care system. Normally, a child’s records are only sealed upon adoption, but under New Jersey’s A1406, all of the kids deemed “safe haved” would have their records sealed, thus producing for the first time a NEW set of kids with sealed records, some of whom would be foster kids with sealed records. This is unprecedented nationally.

A1406 would also enshrine in New Jersey law a newly constructed state granted privilege, that of parental disclosure vetoes over adoptee’s access to our birth certificates.

It is, at it’s core, a conditional access fake “restoration of adoptee rights” bill that includes a provision for contact through intermediaries, a provision in the vetoes that “birthmothers” must sign over medical, cultural, and social histories if they want the veto, otherwise their veto is disreguarded. (This essentially extorts personal medical information out of mothers if they want to use the state constructed veto, a likely HIPAA violation.)

The bill once again creates the intentional conflation around the term “contact preference form.”

Oregon, Maine, New Hampshire, and Alabama’s “contract preference form” has no force of law behind it, they do not not bar adoptees from gaining access to their original documentation.

New Jersey’s 1406’s so called “document of contact preference” on the other hand is actually a disclosure veto cloaked in the language of “preference.” It WOULD prevent adoptees from gaining access to their original birth certificates.

This is precisely the form of “language creep” I’ve warned about in relation to these contact preference documents for years now. As I wrote in my earlier post, Adoptee Rights 101: Class Bastard and how to recognize a genuine adoptee rights bill, the first “contact preference form” was created as part of the struggle to open Oregon’s records. It was not in the ballot measure Oregon voters voted on, but was a later addition.

Section 7 also merits special attention as it too is antithetical to adopteed people, and our familys’ civil rights, our right to avail ourselves of legal remedy in the wake of wrongdoing:

7.    (New section)  a. A person, firm, partnership, corporation, association or agency that has placed a child for adoption shall not be liable in any civil or criminal action for damages resulting from information provided by the State Registrar pursuant to this act.

b.    An employee, agent or officer of the Department of Health and Senior Services who is authorized by the Commissioner of Health and Senior Services to disclose information relating to the certification of birth pursuant to this act, shall not be liable for:

(1) disclosing information based on a written, notarized request submitted in accordance with this act; and

(2) any error or inaccuracy in the information that is disclosed after receipt of a written, notarized request submitted in accordance with this act, and any consequence of that error or inaccuracy.

In short, it would create a liability shield.

Without the ability to pursue our rights in a court of law, we have no hope of our rights being upheld.

This is a massive gift to the industry (as well as the government itself.) Section 7 is little more than a government bail out for erasing industry and state misdeeds in the course of handling our information.

Need a real world example of whose rights this stands to curtail?

Take my post about a story from New Jersey, Catholic Charities offers up another lifetime’s worth of lies and false “reunion”, in which the supposed “reunion” New Jersey’s Catholic Charities facilitated turned out to be just another lie once revealed by a DNA test.

The Adoptee was mismatched and the Family in question was left with no means by which to regain genuine information about where their child actually went other than pursuing the matter in the courts.

As the article my post is based upon, Three decades after adoption, DNA test reveals painful truth, points out, sometimes the courts are the only recourse left open to individuals and families who get screwed by the state and those facilitating in the “reunion industry:”

Angry, and worried about his first-born son’s fate, Ryba consulted with a private investigator. He even tried to file missing person and kidnapping reports with the New Jersey attorney general’s office. He said he was turned away.

As Ryba continues to search for answers, he recognizes that a lawsuit may be his only option. But so far, he has been unable to find an attorney willing to take his case. He also worries about the cost.

Yet New Jersey 1406 stands to close off precisely those legal options. It takes away the final avenue left open to those with no other recourse.

For the liability shield aspects alone, this bill then becomes antithetical to adoptees and our families’ rights.

Obviously, these are but a few of the many fatal flaws with the legislation.

Bastards holding out for a genuine adoptee rights bill, yes after the 30 years of pre-existing work in New Jersey which STILL have not resulted in a clean bill this year, find themselves in some weird middle.

We do not support the bill.

Other adoptees and bill supporters have co-opted so much of the terminology and the core arguments of genuine adoptee rights efforts, yet they utilize such in service to supporting a bill that will ultimately seal yet more records, those of some of New Jersey’s most vulnerable and politically voiceless kids.

The Bastard Nation action alert makes it plain:

Promoters of the bill have co-opted the language of the real adoptee rights movement and real obc access laws by equating their bill to Oregon’s law, which through ballot initiative, restored the right of all that state’s adoptees to the unrestricted right to their own original birth certificates.

Opponents of the bill fight it for their own reasons, (some of which are altogether little more than industry ass covering.)

Bastards oppose it from our own, uniquely Bastard-centric stance (as well as a stance  supportive of our parents, particularly our mother’s genuine personal medical privacy rights.)

This makes us distinct from the factions arguing  both in support and opposition who gave testimony at the hearing. We are a third thing; Bastards opposing the bill from a position of wanting to ensure equality in the eyes of the law WHILE supporting our families’ medical privacy.

Family medical information is best left to families, not newly constructed state bureaucracies, exactly as it is for non-adopted individuals.

I cannot speak for others, but for myself personally, this puts my personal position in close alignment to for example,  Senior Mothers Adoption Activist Coalition (SMAAC.) But then, being situated thusly should surprise no one who has been reading along as I self identify as both a Radical Feminist and a Bastard.

I see no inherent contradiction in supporting the genuine rights of Mothers and simultaneously supporting Bastard rights.

It is primarily the lies of the industry and surrounding culture that set adoptees and mothers against one another politically. In reality, more often than not our interests, particularly in seeing all our personal documentation restored to us tend to align more often than not.

As for the hearing itself, we certainly heard plenty of that pitting Mothers against Bastards and blathering about “balancing rights.”

It was quite possibly one of the most ensnared in non-sequiturs,  reunification-centric, conflationary and extraordinary uses of co-opted language hearings I’ve ever endured listening to in all my years of Bastard activism.

The usual false tropes were brought up:

• many on both sides arguing their stance would result in further abortion reduction/curtailment (whether one used such to support or oppose the bill, the core argument is antithetical to women’s genuine reproductive autonomy. Each individual woman who determines for herself she needs an abortion is a sample of one. When the state begins to set goals for ‘how many is too many women always pay the price.)
• false notions of presumed/alleged/expectations of “birthparent privacy” and supposed “balancing of rights” (which the courts have repeated rejected, see both the Tennessee and Oregon cases. Oregon was appealed to the supreme court, but rejected, finding that the circuit court had correctly decided the matter.)
• the intentional conflations surrounding  “contact preferences” (a contact preference form is not a disclosure veto, nor contact veto)
• the same old same old “opt in” vs “opt out” irrelevancies (both stances support legislation that still curtail Bastard access)
• alleged “needs” for counseling and intermediaries (as we are considered somehow distinct and separate from other adults deemed legally competent to conduct their own interpersonal and family affairs)
• registries and vetoes as some form of adequate substitute for adopted people’s equality (similar to my point above, though also a demand that the state construct systems to collect, maintain and dispense deeply personal information such as personal medical histories as somehow cognized as some form of adequate substitute for adopted people’s full legal equality to nonadopted people)
• opening records to provide some kind of psychological “wholeness” or “completeness (not a rights based argument, rather it reduces our human/civil/identity rights down to what would be a mere state granted-or withheld- privilege confererred almost out of pity upon poor needy and emotionally defective adoptees)
• falsely tangling in family medical histories to original birth certificate access (non-adopted people get no medical information with their OBCs, nor does the state construct systems by which to collect and pass along such deeply personal and legally protected private information for non-adopted people)
• etc.

But by the time the hearing was well underway, it was down to everything from facebook privacy settings to outright lies such as (paraphrasing now):

• nothing is really secret, anyone who really wants to find the information will
• 90% of inter-country adoptees already have their information/less than 10% could be considered confidential
• Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute outright claiming he has “no horse in this race,” when he himself is by his own admission at the hearing an adoptive father and employed by an organization in the very business of promoting the “normalcy” of adoption and adoption as a positive outcome
• Pertman also claimed that going forward those who needed to could always avail themselves of “lawsuits.” Had he actually read section 7 of the legislation, he might have noticed A1406 would specifically curtail New Jersey adoptees and their families right to utilize the courts in relation to information released via the legislation
• the repeated insistence that New Jersey’s “safe haven”/baby dump records are already sealed (then why would this legislation propose to seal them?!?)
• Treating Oregon’s “contact preference” refusals as if they were somehow the same as what New Jersey would experience when Oregon’s preference forms are not in any way legally contact prohibitive and do not bar the adoptee from receiving their original information (i.e. comparing apples and oranges)
• etc.

Put simply, the hearing was a trainwreck, with nonsense and nonsequitors flying by a mile a minute, with co-opted adoptee rights arguments being used in support of this catastrophic bill.

As for genuine Bastard activists?

We’ve been both personally trashed for daring to say anything about ‘another state’s bill’  (never mind the effect it will have on other states, the national precedents in it, the degrading of the term “contact preference” in it, and the fact that it’s actually a sealed records bill and that SOMEONE has to stand for the genuine rights of ALL of New Jersey’s adoptees, boarder babies, and abandoned children) AND simultaneously trashed for not being present at the hearing. (Never mind some of us have real lives, families, and other obligations that made being there impossible.) It’s been ugly.

I may or may not write to that further at a later date. Suffice it to say, I have much to say about what I’ve been seeing as of late out of many so self professed advocates for adoptee rights.

After a hearing the that lasted roughly 5 1/2 hours, the committee voted the bill out to the full Assembly:

Committee Voting:
AHU 6/14/2010 – r/ACS – Yes {6} No {0} Not Voting {0} Abstains {4} – Roll Call

• Vainieri Huttle, Valerie (C) – Yes
• Rodriguez, Caridad (V) – Yes
• Angelini, Mary Pat – Abstain
• Biondi, Peter J. – Abstain
• Fuentes, Angel – Yes
• McHose, Alison Littell – Abstain
• O’Scanlon, Declan J., Jr. – Abstain
• Prieto, Vincent – Yes
• Tucker, Cleopatra G. – Yes
• Wagner, Connie – Yes

An audio archive of the full hearing can be found online, just click the “listen” link next to”Monday, June 14, 2010, 2:00pm Committee Room 16.”

Postscript of sorts-

Throughout our ‘community’ particularly online (be that on mailing lists, in blog posts and comments, in newsletters or even individual’s facebook posts and comments) I’ve watched people’s assumptions are unraveling. Sides are being chosen, and yes, long term friendships have come apart over organizational or individual decisions to either support or oppose  fatally flawed legislation. I’m not merely speaking about New Jersey, but also more broadly, pertaining to Illinois, South Dakota, and other states.

This year has been brutal with roughly 15 states ‘in play’ and next to no clean bills.

New Jersey is its own particular version of Bastard hell in that adopted people and their families have been banging their heads against that particular brick wall for 30 years.

Yes, people are dying.

But as I’ve said over and over, there’s not a Bastard or a Mother, or a family member on this planet that isn’t dying. One can come out to a dead 50 year old just as easily as they can an 80 year old.

The fact that people die is no excuse to gut someone else’s human/identity/civil rights as part of a personal shortcut in HOPES of getting yours (provided of course, you end up being one of the lucky ones not vetoed if the bill passes.)

On the one hand, it’s been hard to watch and truly sad to see these coming aparts yet sadder still to see those willing to sell the rights of the person standing next to them down the river.

Watching in real time as individuals embrace the idea that other adopted people’s rights can be cast aside. The usual promises of “we’ll come back for yours later” sometimes accompany such, but more often than not, it doesn’t.

Regardless of what people say, the reality is both that after people get theirs most pack up and go home, leaving those left behind by such legislation to fend for themselves with an even smaller pool of activists, AND the real bottom line, incremental strategies have never worked, not once, not in a single state.

Don’t be fooled, what bill gets passed will be with adoptees for at least some of their lifetimes.

No state that has ever passed a fake “open records” bill has ever gone back to clean up the toxic mess left in its wake. No state has ever expanded access after a bad bill has passed.

If New Jersey is any measure, bad bills such as the “safe haven” baby dump bill are only followed by proposed tightening and even further sealing in the aftermath. New Jersey’s bill seeks to even further curtaial abandoned children’s rights and access, not expand it.

On the other hand, observing this heart wrenching and tragic process has also clarified a lot.

Today we have a much clearer picture of who stands firmly for full Adoptee equality and who is willing to settle for variations on the theme of second class citizenship. Who believes we can settle for less than being treated equally under the law, and who feels substitutes and further forms of state control, shame, and screwing over both other adoptees and in New Jersey’s case, boarder babies and abandoned children constitutes some sick version of ‘good enough’.

Bastard rights seem to have a lot of fair weather friends.

When the going is easy, there are plenty of people around. But when it comes to standing equally strong for the rights of those all too often left behind? The field clears out quite a bit.

Not that I needed the reminder, but once again, observing this process, this winnowing of who stands strong and who is willing to settle for less than full equality, has taught me in very tangible terms who understands the core concept of class Bastard, and the necessity of protecting the rights and access of the most vulnerable and all too often deemed ‘expendable.’

It has also taught me who doesn’t; who is ok with screwing over someone else to either ‘get theirs’ or ’settle for what we can get now.’

Call it a personal decision, but my support, my time, and yes, my resources have been and will continue to be given accordingly.

Having been left behind by a deform measure, I’ve always understood, that when it comes to Bastard Access- either we all go together or we don’t go at all- “Nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.”

Disney’s fictional characters Lilo, Nani, and Stich have a very great deal to say about notions of leaving people behind. They explain it in terms so simple any child can get their arms around it:

“Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.”

It’s amazing, yet sadly predictable to see some really do consider our real lives, our rights and our real real life families worthy of less.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: WRITE NEW JERSEY GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE TODAY TO VETO SCS799/1399

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT
Please distribute freely!

Please take a minute to write short letter to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and ask him to veto SCS799/1399 if it reaches his desk. The bill passed out of the Human Services Committee on June 14. (NOTE: These are the numbers used by proponents. Two bills have been consolidated and are also known as SCS1406).

SCS799/1399, promoted as an Adoptee’s Birthright Bill, sells adoptees down the river, by creating a new, special 12-month temporary ”veto right” for “birthparents;” thus, exempting the state’s adopted adults from equal protection and treatment regarding the release of the government-generated public record of their births. Promoters of the bill have co-opted the language of the real adoptee rights movement and real obc access laws by equating their bill to Oregon’s law, which through ballot initiative, restored the right of all that state’s adoptees to the unrestricted right to their own original birth certificates.

New Jersey is a key state. If this restrictive legislation is enacted serious harm to the genuine adoptee rights movement throughout the country could occur.

Read SCS799/1399 here
Read SCS799/1399 statement here

SCS799/1399:

*includes a 12- month open enrollment period, starting after the Department of Health and Senior Services releases regs for SCS799/1399 implementation, that allows “birthparents,” to file disclosure vetoes–wrongly called a “contact preference form”– before obcs, past and future, are unsealed.

*authorizes the State Registar to replace the original birth certificate of those subjected to the contact veto/disclosure veto with a mutilated copy of the obc with all identifying information, including the address of the parent(s) at the time of birth (if they appear on the cert) deleted.

*requires “birthparents” who file a contact veto/disclosure veto to submit an intrusive and probably illegal medical and family history form to activate the veto.

*requires “birthparents” who file a contact veto/disclosure veto to fill out the same intrusive and probably illegal medical and family history form.

*seals by default all “safe haven” birth certificates, even though many “safe haven” babies are boarder babies, born to identified mothers and abandoned in hospitals shortly after birth. Some of these children may never be adopted and will never have a genuine birth certificate.

The fiscal note in the original bill has been removed, but the the sub bill mandates the Department of Health and Senior Services to mount an extensive media campaign to inform birthparents of their “special veto right” and other bill “initiatives.”

A typewritten letter or handwritten letter,
no longer than 250 words, is preferable.

Use Veto SCS799/1399: The Adoptee’s Birthright bill in the header and include your name and address.

Governor Chris Christie
PO Box 001
The State House
Trenton, NJ 08625-0001

If a letter is not possible, send an email through the template here.

Bastard Nation’s letter:

Dear Governor Christie:

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America, opposes SCS799/1399: The Adoptee’s Birthright bill. We ask you to veto it if it comes to your desk. The bill is currently awaiting a voice in the Assembly.

SCS799/1399 will permit some New Jersey adopted adults to receive their true and accurate original birth certificates. Others, through compromise language in this bill, will receive only a false and mutilated certificate with the name and address of the parent(s) bureaucratically excised by the State Registrar by order of the birthparent(s).

Bastard Nation rejects the special right of birthparents to remove their names from the birth certificates of their own adult offspring. No other parent has that right. Birthparents should not have different rules.

Since 1999 four states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to their own birth certificates: Oregon through state-wide ballot initiative, and Alabama, New Hampshire, and Maine through legislation. Why should New Jersey buck the tide and pass a bill that continues to treat adoptee access to their own birth certificates as a favor, not a right–a right that the non-adopted enjoy without a second thought? Please veto SCS799/1399 and tell the legislature to return with a new clean bill that restores the right of access to all the state’s adopted citizens.

Yours truly,

Marley E. Greiner

Executive Chair

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: It’s Not Too Late to Stop Illinois HB 5428!

DISTRIBUTE FREELY!

It’s not to late to ask Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to veto HB 5428. Quinn will make his decision on the bill by the end of the week.

Even if you have already contacted the governor’s office, please do it again. Let the real voice of adoptees be heard.

Web contact (email) form: http://www.illinois.gov/gov/contactthegovernor.cfm

Springfield Office
Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Phone: 217-782-0244
FAX 217-763-8710
TTY: 888-261-3336

Chicago Office
Office of the Governor
James R. Thompson Center
100 W. Randolph, 16-100
Chicago, IL 60601
Phone: 312-814-2121
FAX 312-867-0801

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization once more urges you to veto HB 5428, a so-called “adoptee rights” bill promoted as a progressive piece of legislation to correct Illinois’ long-standing Draconian treatment of its adoptees and their families of origin. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The bill’s stated purpose and its final product are diametrically opposed.

The introduction to the bill reads: The General Assembly recognizes that it is the basic right of all persons to access their birth records, and, to this end, supports public policy that allows an adult adoptee to access his or her original birth certificate. The rest of the bill guts the “recognition of that “basic right,” putting unreasonable and outrageous restrictions on that “basic right:”

HB 5428 separates adoptees into two classes by date of birth and then into numerous subclasses of “access” and “contact” eligibility dependent on parental and state “consent.”

HB 5428 “grants” rights to some at the expense of others.

HB 5428 criminalizes adoptees that use information from the Illinois Adoption Reunion and Medical Exchange to locate and contact families of origin.

HB 5428 dictates relationships between adults.

.HB 5428 is a bill that adopted persons and their families of origin did not ask for and do not want. It has virtually no support from adoptee rights and adoption reform organizations in Illinois and throughout the country.

HB 5428 is NOT an original birth certificate access bill. HB 5428 is NOT an adoptee rights bill. HB 5428 is NOT an adoption reform bill.

Instead HB 5428 is an abomination that stalls genuine adoption reform in the state for decades. It does not have the support of any national adoption reform or adoptee rights organization. As other states move forward to restore the right of all its adopted citizens, Illinois, under the constrictions of this bill, will continue to deny equal protection to them.

Leave no one behind! Please veto HB 5428 and ask the legislature to come back with a clean bill that treats all Illinois adoptees as fully equal to non-adopted Illinoisans.